Remote charging station

[baw179]

Trying to concoct some set-up so I can remotely charge up my electric tools on the move but I'm finding it harder to do that I an anticipated. I thought that I'd be able to do something with an ender bag and some BC gates in and out of an MFSU but I'm having 2 issues : 1. is that I can't find a suitable option on the gate that will work properly for charging up the item and 2. is that using 1 colour ender bag I have the problem of the item getting sucked back into the MFSU again. I could easily get around the 2nd issue by using a different colour bag and ender chest for the return but that's cumbersome and means carrying 2 different colour bags.

Any ideas folks? I don't want to use anything RP if I can avoid it. DW20 pack. Thanks.

 

[brujon]

You can do it using Emerald Pipes from Buildcraft. They're like Wooden Pipes, in that they suck items out of a chests inventory, but they also have an interface that you can use to filter just WHAT items get pulled out of the chest by the emerald pipes, so basically an RP Filter + Pneumatic Tube. Hook up an enderchest next to an MFSU, use an emerald pipe to pull Empty Batteries out of the chest and chuck them into the MFSU. Another emerald pipe only pulls full Batteries out of the MFSU, and chucks them into the Ender Chest. You could use Lapotrons or Energy Crystals too, probably a very good idea.

It should work, since BC has no problem with NBT data, and as far as i know, that's how IC2 stores the energy in batteries. Do note, however, that the system won't know what to do with half-empty or half-full batteries/lapotrons/crystals. You'll have to use up all the juice in them before chucking them back into your Ender Pouch.

It should work just fine. As always, test in creative first, then see if it works in your server/ssp. I really don't want to be responsible for wasting resources if my suggestions don't work.

 

[Whovian]

You can do it using Emerald Pipes from Buildcraft. They're like Wooden Pipes, in that they suck items out of a chests inventory, but they also have an interface that you can use to filter just WHAT items get pulled out of the chest by the emerald pipes, so basically an RP Filter + Pneumatic Tube. Hook up an enderchest next to an MFSU, use an emerald pipe to pull Empty Batteries out of the chest and chuck them into the MFSU. Another emerald pipe only pulls full Batteries out of the MFSU, and chucks them into the Ender Chest. You could use Lapotrons or Energy Crystals too, probably a very good idea.

It should work, since BC has no problem with NBT data, and as far as i know, that's how IC2 stores the energy in batteries. Do note, however, that the system won't know what to do with half-empty or half-full batteries/lapotrons/crystals. You'll have to use up all the juice in them before chucking them back into your Ender Pouch.

It should work just fine. As always, test in creative first, then see if it works in your server/ssp. I really don't want to be responsible for wasting resources if my suggestions don't work.

In a Creative build a little while ago, I set up a Router/MFSU-based battery-powered Electric Furnace system, and had a timer for charging. Too scared, assumed any sorting system would pull out half-charged batteries along with fully charged ones. I'll have to test this when I get the chance, but you're probably right.

 

[brujon]

Yeah, the problem is how Redpower 2 handles the item transportation... It strips the NBT Data from items that go through the Tube Network. If the NBT Data is used to store anyhing in the item, then it's lost when you get it on the other side. So for example, Enchanted Books that go through Pneumatic tubes, lose all of their Enchants when they reach the other end. I don't mod, so i don't know why it does this, but i do know BC hasn't got that problem. Like i said, do a bit of testing first, see how this works out... I think maybe filters don't share the RP bug with tubes? IF so you could probably use them, since they directly compare the item going through them to the item in their inventory and check if they allow it to pass or not. If the Emerald Pipes don't work, try filters. IIRC they accept to be connected directly to BC pipes.

When Quartz Crystals had ID problems, they wouldn't sort properly because of this.

 

[Guswut]

Any ideas folks? I don't want to use anything RP if I can avoid it. DW20 pack. Thanks.

If you can install a mod, Advanced Power Management (http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=7900) will give you access to the LV/MV/HV charging benches, which make remote charging systems extremely easy. You input items to be charged in the top, output items that are in the output slot from the bottom.

The basic design is that you use two ender chests/pouches. The first ender chest has a wooden pipe connected with a redstone engine, which inputs into the top of the charging bench (use HV if possible, it'll charge anything). From there, a wooden pipe with redstone engine pull out from the bottom, sucking anything in the bench that is in the charged slot into the second ender chest.

It works perfectly. If you cannot install this mod, though, then I am sorry for you. Good luck!

 

[Peppe]

Yeah, the problem is how Redpower 2 handles the item transportation... It strips the NBT Data from items that go through the Tube Network. If the NBT Data is used to store anyhing in the item, then it's lost when you get it on the other side. So for example, Enchanted Books that go through Pneumatic tubes, lose all of their Enchants when they reach the other end. I don't mod, so i don't know why it does this, but i do know BC hasn't got that problem. Like i said, do a bit of testing first, see how this works out... I think maybe filters don't share the RP bug with tubes? IF so you could probably use them, since they directly compare the item going through them to the item in their inventory and check if they allow it to pass or not. If the Emerald Pipes don't work, try filters. IIRC they accept to be connected directly to BC pipes.

When Quartz Crystals had ID problems, they wouldn't sort properly because of this.

You sure tubes do that? Pretty sure I have seen turtle enchanting rigs setup to dump enchanted books into barrels using tubes.


to the OP. In my last world i setup a charging chest that did not automatically pump items out. Instead it was activated it with a wireless signal (kept the remote in the chest).

So i would dump what i wanted charged in the chest. Grab the wireless remote out and activate it with the remote until all my items were out. Then i put the remote back in and went about my business. The items were pumped out of the enderchest by a RP timer+ transposer into a small run of tube to a relay. Relay attached to the input side of an MFE/MFSU, whatever charging unit you are using.

You can do the same extraction with a BC engine/aurarchtic gate triggered by the wireless remote and buffer the input with hoppers.

On the output of the MFE Initially i used a gold gate, but later went to a diamond gate and set it to activate/pump items out when the inventory matched the fully charged version of the item. BC pipes back to the enderchest. Nice thing about the BC gates is they use ghost items, so this worked with expensive items i only had one of. If you have more than 4-8 items you can setup a gate on each side of the MFE and pump out full items as they finish.

Kept a spare charged jetpack in the chest as 90% of the time that is all i needed charged.


One thing to be aware of, Enderchests may still have a saving bug. The last few months they have had a bug that they don't save when items are pumped in by a machine. A player moving an item or items being pumped out triggers a save. Really only affects single player as the contents are only lost of you save + exit/server shutdown. I discovered it when i made my remote charging station, as i would dump my items in and sometimes not grab it all out then save and close -- come back and usually it was a missing jetpack since i tended to leave that in there and charge the spare last.

 

[brujon]

Watch the latest Direwolf20 stream, he specifically states he wouldn't be using redpower2 tubes to sort his Enchanted books because that wouldn't work because of NBT data and all that, and he ends up using a shitton of diamonds just to make a shitton of Diamond Pipes and route this system the proper way. And he could've just used Iron for it too... Sigh... Advanced Wooden Pipe or Emerald Pipe to filter so that it only pulls enchanted books out of the chest, and then iron pipes to prevent books from flowing in different directions. But that's going off on a tangent.


And yes, NBT Corruption is serious business -> http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/crash-with-pneumatic-tubes-and-cherrywood-saplings.6009/

You don't want items to be stripped of NBT data, most of the time, because a lot of mods use that to store information about the item state. Be it current charge, durability, or whatever.

I don't know if this has been changed, or if it will be changed eventually, but it was something that DW20 mentioned and he generally gets his stuff pretty correct. Luckily, nothing ever happened to me.

 

[Peppe]

Watch the latest Direwolf20 stream, he specifically states he wouldn't be using redpower2 tubes to sort his Enchanted books because that wouldn't work because of NBT data and all that, and he ends up using a shitton of diamonds just to make a shitton of Diamond Pipes and route this system the proper way. And he could've just used Iron for it too... Sigh... Advanced Wooden Pipe or Emerald Pipe to filter so that it only pulls enchanted books out of the chest, and then iron pipes to prevent books from flowing in different directions. But that's going off on a tangent.


And yes, NBT Corruption is serious business -> http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/crash-with-pneumatic-tubes-and-cherrywood-saplings.6009/

You don't want items to be stripped of NBT data, most of the time, because a lot of mods use that to store information about the item state. Be it current charge, durability, or whatever.

I don't know if this has been changed, or if it will be changed eventually, but it was something that DW20 mentioned and he generally gets his stuff pretty correct. Luckily, nothing ever happened to me.

Is it some chance that it corrupts or is it supposed to be 100%?

Cause i whipped up this in creative and tried to run it through some common stuff and both barrels and crystal chests stored the items fine. Pulled the ones that ended up in the crystal chest out and ran them through a second time and they were fine.

Spoiler

Checking individual barrels the first one is unbreaking III books second is charging or something on and on. New books that match go in the proper barrels others continue on.

The books in the barrels, while only being displayed as "Enchanted Book" retained their enchant data and stacked with each other correctly in the barrels and crystal chests. Broke the chest and everything in it was fine.

Seen automated turtle enchant farms running many more books through many more tubes+barrels with no issues.

Not sure what issue direwolf is trying to mitigate, but I haven't seen it with tubes and enchanted books. The forestry sapling issues if it was a tube problem somehow it was resolved with patches to the forestry mod? if i follow the thread correctly...

 

[baw179]

You can do it using Emerald Pipes from Buildcraft. They're like Wooden Pipes, in that they suck items out of a chests inventory, but they also have an interface that you can use to filter just WHAT items get pulled out of the chest by the emerald pipes, so basically an RP Filter + Pneumatic Tube. Hook up an enderchest next to an MFSU, use an emerald pipe to pull Empty Batteries out of the chest and chuck them into the MFSU. Another emerald pipe only pulls full Batteries out of the MFSU, and chucks them into the Ender Chest. You could use Lapotrons or Energy Crystals too, probably a very good idea.

It should work, since BC has no problem with NBT data, and as far as i know, that's how IC2 stores the energy in batteries. Do note, however, that the system won't know what to do with half-empty or half-full batteries/lapotrons/crystals. You'll have to use up all the juice in them before chucking them back into your Ender Pouch.

It should work just fine. As always, test in creative first, then see if it works in your server/ssp. I really don't want to be responsible for wasting resources if my suggestions don't work.

Thanks, however as you've also identified, this is not ideal because the tool/item would need to be completely discharged which is not something you'd generally do. I mean if I wanted to chuck in my quantum suit for example, it's highly unlikely you'd ever be at the point where one or more pieces are completely dead.

to the OP. In my last world i setup a charging chest that did not automatically pump items out. Instead it was activated it with a wireless signal (kept the remote in the chest).

So i would dump what i wanted charged in the chest. Grab the wireless remote out and activate it with the remote until all my items were out. Then i put the remote back in and went about my business. The items were pumped out of the enderchest by a RP timer+ transposer into a small run of tube to a relay. Relay attached to the input side of an MFE/MFSU, whatever charging unit you are using.

You can do the same extraction with a BC engine/aurarchtic gate triggered by the wireless remote and buffer the input with hoppers.

On the output of the MFE Initially i used a gold gate, but later went to a diamond gate and set it to activate/pump items out when the inventory matched the fully charged version of the item. BC pipes back to the enderchest. Nice thing about the BC gates is they use ghost items, so this worked with expensive items i only had one of. If you have more than 4-8 items you can setup a gate on each side of the MFE and pump out full items as they finish.

Kept a spare charged jetpack in the chest as 90% of the time that is all i needed charged.

The wireless trigger is an interesting work-around. The issue I'm having with items being pulled back out of the MFSU is that I have so much power being generated that the MFSU momentarily drops below 10m then once the generators kick in it's straight back to 10m again so the item gets pulled out ('capacitor full - redstone signal'). I don't want to get into using timers (or anything RP for that matter). I did think about restricting the MFSUs power so that it would take enough of a dip under 10m then use the 'capacitor full' setting but as different tools/items charge at different rates I think this could be rather inconsistent.

I reckon some combination of using a wireless trigger to pull items in and then emerald pipes to auto pull out fully charged ones is probably the way to go. I'll do some experimenting later.

 

[Peppe]

Thanks, however as you've also identified, this is not ideal because the tool/item would need to be completely discharged which is not something you'd generally do. I mean if I wanted to chuck in my quantum suit for example, it's highly unlikely you'd ever be at the point where one or more pieces are completely dead.



The wireless trigger is an interesting work-around. The issue I'm having with items being pulled back out of the MFSU is that I have so much power being generated that the MFSU momentarily drops below 10m then once the generators kick in it's straight back to 10m again so the item gets pulled out ('capacitor full - redstone signal'). I don't want to get into using timers (or anything RP for that matter). I did think about restricting the MFSUs power so that it would take enough of a dip under 10m then use the 'capacitor full' setting but as different tools/items charge at different rates I think this could be rather inconsistent.

I reckon some combination of using a wireless trigger to pull items in and then emerald pipes to auto pull out fully charged ones is probably the way to go. I'll do some experimenting later.

We didn't have emerald pipes at the time, so did the pumping with gates, but here is the interface on gold/diamond pipes -- i think it is similar interface to the emerald pipe filter.

Spoiler

 

[Janners420]

We didn't have emerald pipes at the time, so did the pumping with gates, but here is the interface on gold/diamond pipes -- i think it is similar interface to the emerald pipe filter.

Spoiler

I didn't even think about those gates, i didn't know you could filter items in there....

thanks for the tip! i will be playing around with those

 

[Peppe]

I didn't even think about those gates, i didn't know you could filter items in there....

thanks for the tip! i will be playing around with those

Should add that emerald pipes wait on the next item in their filter, so they actually don't add anything useful to these setups. The gate method is probably the most useful or in ultimate a universal charger on an ender chest directly works without the fuss

 

[MysticMC4TW]

It pretty much took me getting bored enough to do it to finally make one, but here's my design:
In a 3x3 space,

Pneumatic Tube___________| Pneumatic Tube | Enderchest
Filter pulling from batbox___| Redstone Timer | Filter pulling from chest
Batbox___________________| Pneumatic Tube | Pneumatic Tube

Put something in the batbox. Set the timer to something like 28 seconds, or whatever, who cares, because you're gonna be grabbing the fresh one out of the Enderchest with a pouch.
This is the easiest low tech remote charger I've come up with/found, That specifically doesn't care how much charge your thing has left on it when you want to recharge it.

*edit* I put the _ so it's easier to read. Stupid thing won't let me type multiple spaces

 

[fleutius]

It pretty much took me getting bored enough to do it to finally make one, but here's my design:
In a 3x3 space,

Pneumatic Tube___________| Pneumatic Tube | Enderchest
Filter pulling from batbox___| Redstone Timer | Filter pulling from chest
Batbox___________________| Pneumatic Tube | Pneumatic Tube

Put something in the batbox. Set the timer to something like 28 seconds, or whatever, who cares, because you're gonna be grabbing the fresh one out of the Enderchest with a pouch.
This is the easiest low tech remote charger I've come up with/found, That specifically doesn't care how much charge your thing has left on it when you want to recharge it.

*edit* I put the _ so it's easier to read. Stupid thing won't let me type multiple spaces

Necromantic master in sight, activate troll defence mode #1

"take a look at the date of the last post in this thread"

 

[Vilmos]

What is wrong with adding useful information to an older thread? That is much better than making a new thread to clutter up searches.

 

[Pyure]

Getting uptight about old threads is the "thing" nowadays. I don't subscribe to it.

Your "spaces" problem is an HTML thing; its annoying to work around.

I like your design and I'm not sure why I never thought of it before. Prolly because I never do ender chest/pouch/stuff.

 

[Omegatron]

What is wrong with adding useful information to an older thread? That is much better than making a new thread to clutter up searches.

The people involved probably don't have the problem anymore. If you were having the same or similar problem then posting on the thread might be acceptable.

 

[Vilmos]

The people involved probably don't have the problem anymore. If you were having the same or similar problem then posting on the thread might be acceptable.

What are you talking about? The person who dug up the thread added a working solution. Anybody searching threads now has a useful response. I always appreciate a solution added. I don't care how old it is. For those of us who search the forums instead of opening new threads every time it is a valuable post.

Much more valuable then complaining about the last post date.

 

[Omegatron]

What are you talking about? The person who dug up the thread added a working solution. Anybody searching threads now has a useful response. I always appreciate a solution added. I don't care how old it is. For those of us who search the forums instead of opening new threads every time it is a valuable post.

Much more valuable then complaining about the last post date.

If someone searching the threads has a problem and finds this thread then they should post in this thread asking about the problem and then wait for someone to respond. The discussion and original problem were mostly resolved. Also, probably very few people are still using 1.4 so the solution given won't help most people who look for the solution later than now.

 

[MysticMC4TW]

Necromantic master in sight, activate troll defence mode #1

"take a look at the date of the last post in this thread"

eh... just tryin to help